Data Protection & Disaster Recovery

Feb

16th

2008

Filed Under Computers
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A buddy of mine asked me for some thoughts on how to protect data from a disaster such as a fire, theft, or a hardware failure. This topic is fresh on my mind as I just went through an “information security audit” at work where our department was identified as having several large gaps in our plan for effective data backup and security. That audit prompted me to make some personal changes at home to protect my own data.

Some things to consider before deciding on a disaster recovery plan:

How much data do you have to back up?
Is the data already “backed up” on some other device besides your PC (i.e. music on an iPod)?
How time critical is the data? If your hard drive dies, how soon do you need the file?
What happens if your backup device is compromised (i.e. you lose your USB thumb drive)?
How much are you willing to spend?

There are a variety of options available for data backup. Some of these are:

Online
- IDrive.com - 2GB for free
- Carbonite.com - Unlimited space for $50/year
- IronMountain.com - Price varies according to space required
USB Thumb Drive - smaller size availability, but portable
External Hard Drive(s) - large capacity
Multiple Internal Hard Drive(s) with RAID capability

There’s no single right answer for your data backup solution. You’ll just want to make sure and protect against a physical disaster (fire, hardware failure) and/or theft, and use a logical security (i.e. passwords or encryption) method to insure your data cannot be compromised. Also, your backup solution MUST BE EASY. If it isn’t, you won’t stick with it. If at all possible, backups should be automated!!

My personal solution is listed below:

Quicken backups on a passworded USB thumb drive that is usually connected to the PC and a yearly backup CD in the firesafe
Photo backups on Flickr.com
Master documents stored on Google Documents